Report: Increase in the Swedish gambling tax will cause problems for 1,000 extra gamblers

The Swedish trade association for online games (BOS) today presents a report from the analysis institute Copenhagen Economics (CE). CE has calculated on a number of important points what the tax increase on gambling (from 18% to 22%) will lead to from July 1 this year. CE notes that:

The tax increase will reduce the share of the legally regulated licensing market in the gambling market by 1.2 -2.5 percentage points. The corresponding losses for the regulated gaming market will be absorbed by the non-regulated gaming market.

Tax increase leads to 6,000 new problem gamblers!

Measured in number of people, this means that 2,881 to 6,085 people will switch to non-licensed alternatives.

As a direct result of the tax increase on gambling, an estimated 591 to 1,247 people will experience gambling problems. This is due to the loss of licensed games of chance to unlicensed games of chance. Gambling without a license lacks legal consumer protection.

The expected higher tax revenues are calculated by the Swedish Ministry of Finance at 539 million SEK per year, which corresponds to 46.60 Million Euro. Copenhagen Economics calculates that the higher tax revenues will be significantly lower: SEK 214-399 million, equivalent to 19M – 34M euros.